Adrian Hill (1895–1977) was a British artist and pioneering Art Therapist. He wrote many best-selling books about painting and drawing, and in the 1950s and early 1960s presented a BBC children’s television program called ‘Sketch Club.’
His own work combined elements of impressionism and surrealism as well as more conventional representations, and was widely displayed at major art galleries during his lifetime, both in Britain and abroad.
During World War I, he was an Official War Artist on the Western Front. He combined his drawing abilities with his work in a Scouting and Sniping Section of the Honourable Artillery Company; He recalled a typical patrol into ‘No man’s land’: ‘I advanced in short rushes, mostly on my hands and knees with my sketching kit dangling round my neck. As I slowly approached, the wood gradually took a more definite shape, and as I crept nearer I saw that what was hidden from our own line, now revealed itself as a cunningly contrived observation post in one of the battered trees.’
In 1938, while convalescing from tuberculosis at a sanatorium (a medical facility for long-term illness), he passed the time by drawing nearby objects from his hospital bed, and found the process helpful in aiding his own recovery. In 1939, ‘Occupational Therapy’ was introduced to the sanatorium for the first time and Hill was invited to teach drawing and painting to other patients – first injured soldiers returning from the war, and then general civilian patients. Hill found that the practice of Art seemed to help to take the patient’s mind off their illness or injuries and to release their mental distress.
Hill believed that art appreciation also aided recovery from illness and was involved, with the British Red Cross Society, in setting up a scheme whereby reproductions of famous artists’ works were lent to hospital wards all over the country – speakers were also engaged – including Hill himself – to talk to patients about art. He worked tirelessly to promote art therapy, eventually becoming president of the British Association of Art Therapists (founded in 1964), though he found himself at odds with its increasingly psychoanalytical orientation.
Hill apparently coined the term ‘Art therapy’ in 1942, and in 1945 published his ideas in the book ‘Art Versus Illness.’ He thought that when the patient’s physical resistance was at its lowest this somehow rendered the ‘animal ego’ quiescent and allowed the creative powers of the ‘spiritual essence’ to come through in works of art. He recognised that war was not only physically destructive but also damaged ‘minds, bodies and hopes’ and that the need for psychological healing was even more important than mere physical repair of ‘property and estate.’ He believed that the practice of art, ‘in sickness and in health,’ could turn society away from war, and saw art therapy as becoming an integral part of the National Health Service.
The Daily Omnivore 
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